373. Editorial Note
According to several of the participants, on October 24 representatives of Great Britain, France, and Israel, who had been meeting secretly at Sèvres on the outskirts of Paris, signed a document which embodied the following understanding: Israeli forces were to invade the Sinai Peninsula on October 29 with the aim of reaching the Suez Canal Zone by the following day; Great Britain and France would then issue an ultimatum to both Israel and Egypt to withdraw 10 miles from the Canal Zone and accept a temporary Anglo-French occupation of the Zone; if Egypt rejected the ultimatum, Great Britain and France would begin military operations against Egyptian forces early in the morning of October 31. The document also provided for an Israeli occupation of the western shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and the islands of Tiran and Sanafir and contained a promise from the Government of Israel not to attack Jordan during the period of operations against Egypt. (The terms of the understanding are described in Christian Pineau, Suez/1956 (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976), pages 149–152, and Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life (New York: Morrow, 1976), pages 231–232.)
The Israeli Delegation, headed by Ben Gurion and including Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, had arrived in France and begun discussions with Prime Minister Mollet, Pineau, and Defense Minister Bourgès-Maunoury on October 22. That evening Lloyd met briefly with the others; the following evening (October 23) Pineau traveled to London where he discussed the matter directly with Eden and Lloyd. Back in France on October 24, after further discussions, the document was finally signed by Ben Gurion, Pineau, and Deputy Under Secretary of the British Foreign Office Patrick Dean, who attended the final discussions in Lloyd’s place.
[Page 777]Dayan’s Story of My Life (pages 211–234) provides a detailed account of the Sèvres meeting. Anthony Nutting in No End to a Lesson ((London: Constable, 1967), pages 101–105) reports what Selwyn Lloyd told him at the time about the meeting. Pineau’s Suez/1956 (pages 149–155) differs in some details from Dayan’s and Nutting’s accounts and from that of General Paul Ely (Memoires * * Suez … le 13 Mai (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1969), pages 145–153); but all basically tell the same story. In his memoirs, Lloyd gives a similar description of the meeting at Sèvres but denies that what happened constituted collusion. According to Lloyd, at no time did British representatives request that Israel take military action; they “merely stated what would be our reactions if certain things happened.” Also, while Pineau terms the document signed a “protocol”, Lloyd maintains that it was simply “a record of the discussion on which the three delegations would report.” (Suez 1956, A Personal Account, pages 186–188)